Re: Re: Question on affinities (subject title changed)

From: Benedict Adamson <yahoo_at_...>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 00:44:56 +0100


badelberg wrote:
...
> One problem with this is the HW has no concept of difficulty or level
> of a feat. Take for example Sword Help and Killing Rain, simple
> interpretation would imply one makes you use a sword a little better
> while the other could be used to kill an army. Yet these feats cost
> the same number of hero points.

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

What do you mean by 'difficulty'?

 > I like to also analyze how magic would affect society.  If learning
 > to fly is only slightly harder than learning to ride a horse why
 > would anyone still be riding horses?

You mean that someone in the game world would have to spend more effort to learn one ability than another. But HPs don't represent that; HPs don't correspond to anyhting 'inside' Glorantha, they are a pure game construct.

HW allows a player to have almost anything as an ability. So, why bother creating characters with 'Ranged Combat (Javelin) 1W' when you could have a character with 'Glance of Death 1W'? A 'Glance of Death' is obviously better than a thrown javelin, right? Well, perhaps you are very innacurate with it. Or it only works if you are angry. Or it requires a complicated and easilly interrupted incantation. Or it requires inense, and difficult to achieve, levels of mental concentration. Or something. Although you can have almost any ability, the mere name of an ability does not make it powerful. What makes an ability powerful is having a large ability rating. Thus 'Glance of Death 1W' is about as powerful as 'Ranged Combat (Javelin) 1W'.

So what is the difference betwen abilities with somewhat similar areas of application (e.g. all abilities that could be used to try to kill people at range)? Sometimes, nothing at all other than a dsecription of the 'special effects'. However, sometimes the improvisational modifiers are different.

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